In Small Rooms with Betawi Women
Not for the first time, I found myself in a tiny room on a hot day, the youngest among old women. Each with a different thing to say to me, also the only person not from around these parts.
You're so old now! And unmarried!
Your hair is too white! Eat more soy beans!
One woman rubbed my tattoos, making a screechy sound with her teeth, before announcing to all the other old women around her: these are real.
No judgement, no scorn – I was local enough to be in a place like that, but not local enough to be judged.
Can you bring me some white chocolate next time you come, girl? I had them once and only in your country (Singapore). I've never had them since. She rubbed my back some more.
At places like these old women collectively talk, soothe each other's tired or injured muscles, and together not give a damn about anything outside of those doors. At least for an hour.
I went often to places like these, my severe back pains often needing urgent attention from anything that would give them rest. In Jakarta, I am a frequent visitor to Haji Naim – a group of famed healers in the Betawi community. I figured that if it didn't work there was at least delicious soto Betawi to be had next door. Now that I come here so often, a massage almost always precedes a lovely bowl of soup and beef.
I've always been glad to have the ability and opportunity to bond with old women anywhere in the world – their wisdom and unlikely sorority is what I look forward to, whether in Yemen or India or Singapore. Here, the Betawi women took turns rubbing my tattoos, shrieking when they discovered (repeatedly) that they were real.
Most of my time in this city has been about discovering, for the first time, scenes that played such a large part in my youth. Hot afternoons with old Indonesian women. Dusk on the street with teenagers singing with their guitars. Children begging. Families living under bridges. The Indonesian movies that used to play so often in my tiny, hot Singaporean shoebox apartment, now alive in parts of the city.
And yet the other parts of it are real, too. Large gleaming buildings. New shiny things. Cocktails as expensive as Singapore's. Malls full of only imported things. My feet in both worlds: one in the village and one in Pacific Place. One in meetings with fancy people, another under the firm thumbing of extremely old women.
It's a difficult balance to keep up, but I enjoy each moment. White chocolate in Betawi houses; going home to my $5 room after a day out in $5 coffee houses. Improbable things and inevitable places. As I chug along at work and in life, I'm relieved to have the opportunity to make things work again.